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Pompey: „you are our last resort: unless you come to our aid, my armies, against my
wish but as I have already warned you, will cross to Italy and bring with it the whole
Spanish War:‟ ‘reliqui vos estis: qui nisi subvenitis, invito et praedicente me exercitus
hinc et cum eo omne bellum Hispaniae in Italiam transgredientur’ (Sallust, fr.
2.82.10). 244
It seems inconceivable that the historical Pompey, if he was as concerned with
appearances as the opening of the letter suggests, would threaten to alienate the Senate
and march an army to Rome at a time when he hoped for a triumph as the reward for his
Spanish victory. 245 As it is very likely that Sallust‟s Histories post-date 246 the death of
Pompey, the letter may have been edited by Sallust and must be treated with caution.
Nevertheless, the main point for this thesis is that the phrasing indicates an awareness of
the risk to appear Hannibalic.
A more sympathetic tradition appears in Appian‟s text about Pompey, and possibly
alludes to the letter in Sallust. Appian describes Pompey „courageously crossing the
Alps, but not with the expenditure of labour of Hannibal, but by opening another
passage around the sources of the Rhône and the Eridanus (Po),‟ (Appian, BC, 1.109). 247
The underlying politics in these representations to distance Pompey from Hannibal
requires Hannibal‟s route across the Alps to be „known‟ and presented as crossing
through a high and difficult pass.
The comparison between Hannibal and others were not necessarily related to
common actions; his comparison to Sertorius 248 (defeated in Spain by Pompey) is
related to a shared physical characteristic. Plutarch observed that some of history‟s most
able generals had been one-eyed men: Sertorius, Hannibal, Philip and Antigonus. All
four were notable for their achievements and cunning in warfare, although Sertorius was
reputed to have been more merciful towards his enemies than Hannibal (Plutarch,
Sertorius, 4). Plutarch‟s biography is, of course, written much later than Sallust‟s letter
(c. 75 AD) but Plutarch believed that the comparison was old, derived from a Greek
tradition related to courtiers‟ flattery of Mithridates. The flatterers compared Sertorius to
244 Sallust, Fr. 2.82.10; translation adapted from McGushin, 1992, 59.
245 McGushin, 1992, 14: „Sallust often allows a figure to present their own point of view to justify conduct
or policy and then creates an ironical contrast to the situation as Sallust sees it. What little is known of
Sallust suggests that he began his political life as a Pompeian but transferred his allegiance to Caesar,
perhaps after being expelled from the Senate in 50 (Dio, 40.63.4).‟
246 McGushin, 1992, 4 uses internal evidence to date Sallust‟s works between 44-35, noting that Jerome is
unreliable for 35 as the date for Sallust‟s death.
247 Transl. McGushin, 1992, 245.
248 See Plutarch, Sertorius.
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